LARAMIE -Political borders may be crumbling under the impact of interstate water compacts, but other boundaries will continue to plague Wyoming water users, including the fish in the state's streams, experts said Tuesday.

"To the extent that borders are dissolving, borders are also still there," State Engineer Pat Tyrell told participants in the eighth annual Stroock Forum on Wyoming Lands and People at the University of Wyoming.

The forum this year focused on Wyoming rivers and water use. It included discussions on managing river basins, instream flow, and issues specific to the Platte River.

Tyrell participated in a panel about managing river basins. He said the new borders include those separating farmers and city dwellers, industry and the environment, and agriculture and the environment.

"We will be for the foreseeable future, maybe for the unforeseeable future, having these debates, having arguments and have collaboration and solutions down the road," he said.

"We are always going to need water," the engineer said, "and they are not making much more of it."

Jeff Kessler, conservation director and cofounder of the Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, said that of 60 native fish species found in Wyoming waters more than a century ago, some have vanished or settled in other states, and 41 are "at some level of conservation concern."

"Most of these fish have no real protection," Kessler said. "Ultimately, the fish of Wyoming are an irreplaceable part of our natural heritage, just as much as the elk, the grizzly bear and the bison."

The state prohibits the importation of exotic deer or elk, but alien species such as rainbow and brook trout, he noted, may be imported indiscriminately, "and in many instances have done great harm" to native species.

Kessler said physical borders such as dams affect the fish, but "one of the biggest stumbling blocks in preserving native species is conceptual borders," such as the distinction between game fish and trash fish.

Another conceptual border is time, he said. "How much time do we have to protect or restore these waters before our fish are gone forever?

"If we treat our rivers and streams as plumbing and only plumbing, then these native fish will continue to decline," he said. "Our natural heritage will be diminished, and I think Wyoming will be the poorer for it."

Edward Barbiere, a professor of economics and finance at the UW, discussed the impact of water regulation on economic development.

"To me, the issue was analyzing what is the potential relationship between the economic growth of a country and its fresh water availability," he said. He argued that when water becomes scarce, "it is going to cost us more in terms of taxes and economic expenditures to get that water out."

Sometimes, he said, it might turn out that "there is not just enough water around, and in that case, you are going to have restraints on growth as well."